The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-02-19
" HANDSOME is THAT HAND
SOME DOES"
BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.


hold up your heads, girlsp was the Ian
guage of Primrose in the play when ad-
dressing her daughters. The worthy
matron was right. "What is good look
ing" as Horace Smith remarks, "but
looking good?" Be good, be womanly, be
gentle, generous in your sympathies,
heedful of the well-being of all around
you; and, my word for it, you will not
lack kind words of admiration; loving
and pleasant associations will gather
about you.
Never mind the ugly reflection which
your glass may give you; that mirror has
no heart. But quite another picture is
yours on the retina of human sympathy;
there the beauty of holiness, of purity.
OF that inward grace which passeth show,
rests over it, softening and mellowing it's
features, just as the calm moonlight
melts those Of rough landscape into
harmonious loneliness.
"Hold up your heads, girlsr' I repeat
after Primrose. Why should you not?
Every mothers daughter Of you can be
beautiful! You can envelop yourselves
in an atmosphere Of moral and intellec-
tual beauty, through which your other
wise plain faces will look forth like those
OF angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffen-
ing in the cold of northern winter,
seemed the diminutive, smokes stained
women of Lapland, who wrapped him in
their furs, and ministered to his necessi-
ties with kindness, and gentle words of
compassion. Lovely to the home.sick
heart of Park seemed the dark maids of
Sego, as they sang their low and simple
song of welcome beside his bed, and
sought to comfort the white stranger,
"who had no mother to bring him milk
and no wife to grind him corn"
Oh talk as we may of beauty as a
thing to be chiselled from marble or
wrought out on canvas; speculate as we
may upon its colors and outlines, what is
it but an intellectual abstraction, after
all? The heart feels beauty of another
kind; looking through the outward en-
vironment. it discovers a deeper and more
real loneliness. This was we'll under
stood by the old painters. In their
pictures Of Mary, the Virgin Mother, the
beauty which melts and subdues the
gazer is that of the soul and the affec-
tions, uniting the awe and mystery Of
that mothers miraculous allotment, with
the irrepressible love, the unutterable
tenderness of young maternity,-Hea-
VEINS GROWING miracle, with Natures
hottest and sweetest instinct.
And their pale Magdalens, holy with
the look of sins forgiven, how the
divine beauty of their penitence sinks
into the heart! Do we not feel that the
only real deformity is sin, and that good
ness evermore hallows and sanctifes it's
dwelling-place? When the soul is at
rest, when the passions are all attuned to
the divine harmony.-"spirits moving
unsteady to lute's well. ordered law"
do we not read the placid significance
thereof in the human countenance? Il
have SEEM" said Charles Lamb, "faces
upon which the dove of peace sat brood
ing" In that simple and beautiful
record of holy life, "The Journal of
John Woolman," there Is a passage of
which l have been more than once re-
minded in my intercourse with my fellow
beings: "Some glances of real beauty
may be seen in their faces who dwell in
true meekness. There is divine harmony
in the sound of that voice to which di vine
love gives utterance."
Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was
that of woman whom the world calls
beautiful. Through its "silver veil' the
evil and ungentle passions looked out
hideous and hateful. On the other hand,
there are faces which the multitude at
the first glance pronounce homely, unat
tractive, and such as Mature fashions by
the gross" which always recognize with
warm heart thrill; not for the world
would l have one feature changed; they
please me as they are; they are hallowed
by kind memories; they are beautiful
through their associations; nor are they
any the less welcome, that with my ad-
miration of them "the stranger inter.
meddleth not"